09 September 2013

Welcome, Elena Greene!

Having fallen on hard times, Emma Westfield provides for herself and her
young brother by teaching at the school in their village. Life has
taught her to hide her passionate nature, but her resolution wavers when
a handsome aeronaut crashes his balloon nearby and is brought to her
cottage.

Estranged from his family, Captain Gilbert Manning has
spent most of his life in the British army, campaigning from India to
Waterloo. Now that the war is over, he supports himself and veterans of
his company by giving balloon exhibitions.

Emma learns that the
outwardly devil-may-care rogue recovering on her sofa bears inner scars
as grim as those on his body. Gil knows he’s not an eligible suitor,
but he longs to teach Emma to embrace life despite all its tragedies.
Although they struggle against it, their passion sweeps them along,
taking them on a scandalous flight across the English countryside.

They must marry, but can they make a life together?

I fully admit that I'm filled with glee and envy that Elena has written a book with a balloonist hero. I've had an opening scene for just such a book stuck in my head for years now, but have yet to find the book it belongs to. Elena has generously agreed to give away a copy of FLY WITH A ROGUE today, so please remember to leave your email in the comments so we can contact you!

Fly with a Rogue is set in 1817. Is there a particular reason you chose that year?

I wanted it to be about two years after
Waterloo, time for my hero to recover from his wounds and start his new
endeavor, giving balloon ascensions.

How
did you become interested in this time period? What you love about it?

My mother loved Georgette Heyer’s
novels and traditional Regency romances. They were all over the house and, as a
child, I devoured them. In third grade, I got in trouble with a nun at school
for having Venetia in my bookbag. I don’t think she realized how much vocabulary I
learned from Heyer’s books and that’s why I won all the spelling contests! Later,
in my teens, I learned to appreciate Jane Austen and I also started reading Regency-set
historical romances by favorite authors including Jo Beverley and Mary Jo
Putney. Now that I’m writing in the period, I particularly love reading Regency
era letters, diaries and memoirs. What do I love about the Regency? The visual beauty
of clothes, architecture, and the landscape. The history: the Napoleonic Wars,
the changes going on in society, how these things affected people as
individuals.

What
do you like least about this period? Anything that constrained you or that you
had to plot carefully around?

There are things I wouldn’t like to
live with: limitations on women’s opportunities for education and public life,
for instance. But these constraints in the period can contribute to story
conflict, so I don’t plot around them. I strive to write heroines who are
strong, or who come into their strength in the course of the story, despite the
challenges posed by their position in society. That’s a tension that’s still relevant
now.

Anything
you flat-out altered or “fudged”? If so, why?

To set up my hero’s backstory, I
changed what happened in one part of the Battle of Waterloo, replacing two real
captains of the Rifle Brigade with my hero and another character. It’s at the
level of detail many people wouldn’t notice, but Sharpe fans might. I included
an Author’s Note because of that, also because I like to keep the record
straight when real people were involved.

Any
gaffs or mea culpas you want to fess up to before readers get their hands on
the book? I know I always seem to find one after the book has gone to press.
*sigh*

None that I know of at this point, but
I always worry! It’s the things you think you know that bite you.

Tell
us a little about your hero. Something fun, like his favorite childhood pet, or
his first kiss.

Not only does Gil know how to pilot a
hydrogen balloon, he also juggles. Though not as well as he pilots the balloon,
or he and my heroine, Emma, wouldn’t have had a happy ending.

What sparked this
book? Was it a character? An historical event? A scene you just couldn’t get
out of your head?

I’ve had the idea of a balloonist hero since I started
going to the local Balloon Rally and Spiediefest (in upstate New York we have a
festival to celebrate grilled meat on a stick). At first I pictured a hero who was very
fun, the right sort of man to shake up a
heroine who takes things too seriously. By the time I got to work on the story,
years later, Gil had taken on more depth, but there’s still a lot that’s fun
about this story.

Did you have to do
any major research for this book? Did you stumble across anything really
interesting that you didn’t already know?

This is the most research-intensive book I’ve written so
far, between the military backstory and the ballooning. The stories of the
early aeronauts were sometimes amusing, sometimes tragic.People who’ve read about the first crossing
of the English Channel by balloon may know that the two aeronauts, Blanchard
and Jeffries, had to strip off most of their clothing to avoid landing in the
water. I didn’t know until I’d delved further that they also relieved
themselves over the side to lighten the load. Sadder was the story of Madame
Blanchard, who gave balloon ascensions after her husband’s death but tragically
died after setting off fireworks from her balloon.

What
are you planning to work on next?

I’m
still thinking about it. One idea is to do stories about the four foundlings in
an earlier release, Lady Dearing’s Masquerade. As adults, they would face interesting
challenges, since society held a stigma against foundlings.

Now I picture the hero in the balloon juggling his clothes to impress the heroine, and the clothes accidentally going over the side...and of course he tells her it was on purpose (to lighten the load!) :-)

By the way, I love ballooning Regencies, and am looking forward to reading this one!